SpeedFan,
used to monitor the on-chip thermal sensors. The sensors are not calibrated,
so results are not universally applicable. The hottest core reading is used.

Prime95,
used to stress the CPU heavily, generating more heat than most real applications.
8 instances are used to ensure that all 4 cores (with Hyper-threading) are
stressed.

CPU-Z,
used to monitor the CPU speed to determine when overheating occurs.

Thermometers to measure the air temperature around the test platform
and near the intake of the heatsink fan.

Noise measurements are made with the fans powered from the lab's variable DC
power supply while the rest of the system was off to ensure that system noise
did not skew the measurements.

Load testing was accomplished using Prime95 to stress the processor, and the
graph function in SpeedFan was used to ensure that the load temperature is stable
for at least ten minutes. The temperature recorded is the highest single core
reading. The stock fans were tested at various voltages to represent a good
cross-section of airflow and noise performance.